She said: "Mark and I have been together 26 years, I remember seeing him out for the first time and hearing that he wanted to ask me out, he was Mr Cool and I was so chuffed.

"Our home beside the sea was our wee world.

"When Mark came home from a 24 hour shift, he would come in and say: ‘Oh Hermione I love getting home to you and the kids, but I love flying that helicopter’. He would then shut the door and engross himself in our home life...

"When I learned nearly two weeks ago that Mark and all the crew of Search and Rescue Helicopter 116 were missing and feared dead, I understood perhaps for the first time, the cry of Jesus on that terrible night in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken us?”

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"It seemed so unfair that while the rest of us were left untouched a young man such as Mark - happy, generous to a fault, innocent of heart and soul, beloved of his wife and children and family and all of us, should have been so tragically removed from among us."